Gus Amato nodded. His eyes were wet.
"Second floor of Brandt's," he said. "Furniture warehouse. All that lacquer and varnish. I was forty-three and old enough to know better and I went too deep and the stairs went out behind me. Couldn't see my own hand. Your dad was already out — he'd made it out, he was on the street. Somebody yelled that Amato was still up there." He stopped. Around them the station was loud with children and plates and the football game, but in the small space between the two of them there was a great silence. "He went back in. Found me by feel. Got me to a window. Got me out onto the ladder. I got down. He was right behind me. And then the floor —" He couldn't finish. He didn't need to.
"I always knew someone," Nora said. "I always knew he went back for someone. My mother never told me who. I think she didn't want me to — I think she didn't want there to be a face."
"I wrote her," said Gus. "Every year. On the eleventh. For fourteen years, until she passed. She wrote back once. Just once, the first year." He reached into his sport coat and took out a folded envelope, soft and gray with handling. "I brought it. I don't know why. When Cal said you might be coming, I went home last night and got it out of my drawer. I thought you should have it."
Nora took it with fingers she couldn't feel. She knew the handwriting on the front before she had looked at it properly. Her mother's handwriting, small and slanted and careful, the same hand that had written her name on her lunch bag every school day for six years.
"I'll read it later," she whispered. "Not here."
"Course not." Gus nodded and nodded. "Course not, honey. I just — I've got five grandkids, Miss Haverty. Two of 'em are here today. That's them, by the pole, the one in the red sweater and the little one chasing him. Every one of 'em is because of your dad. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to see them."